


With True Love and Brotherhood

by LizBee



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-27
Updated: 2008-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizBee/pseuds/LizBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has an invitation, Rosita has a firm right hook, and there's a Yeti.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With True Love and Brotherhood

Between the pudding and the brandy, as Jackson put his exhausted, traumatised boy to bed, the Doctor sidled up to Rosita.

"Big night," he said.

"It was brilliant," said Rosita. "You saved a man, his son and the world, all in a few hours. Bloody marvellous, it was."

"Reckon it's the kind of life you'd like?"

"Beg your pardon?"

"You didn't sign up to be a nursemaid," he said, "you wanted adventure, and challenges, and new horizons."

"I always wanted to travel," she said. "Africa, the Orient ... I wanted to be a woman of the world."

"You could be a woman of the universe."

"Yeah," she sounded wistful. Then she punched him in the arm. Hard. "That's the sort of person you want as your 'companion', is it, someone who'll leave her friends as soon as you make your sheep's eyes and talk about the universe a bit?"

"Um," said the Doctor.

"And what's wrong with being a nursemaid? 'S better than what I was before." Rosita dropped her voice, which had been growing shrill. "I ain't a romantic, Doctor -- a bit of time'll pass and he'll go back to being a gentleman, and he won't want me for his friend no more. But for now," her jaw was set, "he needs me. And his kid."

"It doesn't seem fair."

"Yeah, and who's been telling you life was meant to be fair?"

"I make it fair," said the Doctor, but the words sounded hollow in his ears. Rosita opened her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by the return of Jackson.

"Frederick's sleeping," he said, "at last. Losing his mother - the Cybermen - the workhouse - he's been through a lot." He paused a moment, his expression distant, then rallied. "Come," he said, offering Rosita his arm, "there's a chess set in the parlour, and I haven't yet introduced you to the subtleties of the rook."

"It won't last," said Rosita softly, as Jackson set up the board, "but it's worth it while it does." She smiled. "Give us a year. Ask me again next Christmas."

*

Of course he cheated. Skipped forward a few months to check Jackson's address, lingered to accidentally replace news reports about metallic monsters in the Thames with stories about humorously-shaped vegetables, and then --

Next stop, Christmas.

Jackson Lake resided in an unremarkable house near the University. At lunchtime, the Doctor knocked on the door.

There was a rumbling within, and the door opened.

"Merry -- oh."

The Doctor looked up at seven feet of angry Yeti, but only for a moment, because then Rosita appeared behind it, brandishing--

"Oh, brilliant," said the Doctor, as Rosita's electrified poker stunned the Yeti into submission.

"Are you gonna help, or just stand around flapping your gob?" Without waiting for an answer, Rosita cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted, "Mr Lake? JACKSON!"

"Here," he appeared on the road, dishevelled and red in the face. "I found their nest, near the river -- good to see you, Doctor! Now, run!"

"Good year?" the Doctor asked as they sprinted down the street.

"Never better," said Jackson.

"And Frederick?"

"Fit as a fiddle, though his schoolmasters regret that he's--" Jackson paused to draw breath -- "full of fanciful stories--"

"Oh, well, the rise of a Cyberking will do that--"

"Not to mention the star-poet that landed in his room," Rosita added. They paused at a corner, and she punched him.

"What was that for?" the Doctor demanded.

"For not telling me the universe would come to us," she said.

"Oh, well." The Doctor tugged at his earlobe. "That."

He was going to say something profound and brilliant, about how some people couldn't close their eyes again once they'd been opened, and some people couldn't resist a challenge, or an adventure, or the words "help me", and that was humans for you, some of them were susceptible to all three, and more. And some of them just didn't need him.

Only he didn't say anything, because then there was a vast rumbling beneath the surface, and the great Yeti invasion of Christmas 1852 was on. And Jackson Lake had a home-made scanner, and Rosita had an electrified poker, and the Doctor had ... well, himself and the contents of his pockets, but he had a suspicion that he could wander away now, and the planet would still be intact in a hundred and fifty years' time.

Jackson must have guessed some of what he was thinking, because he said, "Not thinking of leaving us, are you, Doctor?"

"Who, me?"

"Yeah," said Rosita, "you."

"Can't get rid of me," the Doctor promised, "not until after Christmas dinner, anyway."

He met Rosita's eyes, and she grinned. He'd ask, as promised, and she'd say no, and that was perfectly right, because she had her own Doctor, and her own fantastic life, and she didn't need to leave home to see new horizons.

 

end


End file.
